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GBA | Fighting | Digimon Battle Spirit

Boxart for Digimon Battle Spirit
Digimon Battle Spirit 9 screen shots
  • GRAPHICS: 3.5
  • SOUND: 2.5
  • CONTROL: 3.5
  • FUN FACTOR 3.0
  • AVG USER SCORE n/a
  • AVG CRITIC SCORE 3.0

Review: Digimon BattleSpirit

Review by FENNECFOX | 02/25/2003 | 16:49:12 PM PST

Cute little monsters hop around and beat the digital tar out of each other. Oh, and there're all these balls flying around, too. It's trippy.

The first thing hardened gamers will notice when loading up Digimon BattleSpirit for the first time is the border. The big green border. The border that encompasses the screen for the entire game, even on the title page. Where'd this border come from? What's it want from us? Help me!

After getting over our initial panic, we found that there's a perfectly reasonable explanation for the border: BattleSpirit is a port of a game originally released for Bandai's WonderSwan Color portable system in Japan, a system whose screen resolution is slightly smaller than the GBA's. Instead of redrawing the backgrounds to match the GBA's larger screen size, the developers at Dimps apparently decided to simply port the game as it is and put a border around the screen at all times. That would also explain why the music, although catchy at times, sounds like something out of a 10-year-old Game Boy title.

The second thing you'll notice about BattleSpirit?and likely the only thing Digimon fans will care about?is that it's not that bad a licensed arcade fighter, as these things go. Choosing from seven Digimon at the start of the game (with more unlockable later on), the object in the story mode is to make it through seven one-on-one battles with other Digimon, with Impmon as a mid-boss and the all-powerful Millenniumon waiting for you at the end. Digivolution is possible only by touching Culumon when it appears (usually once per round, depending on how you've set up the options).

Not particularly different from Digimon Rumble Arena so far, right? The real difference lies in your energy bar?or lack thereof. Whenever you hit your opponent, he drops one or several "D-spirits"?little balls that bounce around the arena. You win a match if you've picked up more of these spirits than your enemy when time runs out. The result of this: battles tend to alternate between small bursts of close combat, followed by mad dashes for the opponent's happily bouncing spirit balls before they disappear. (Digivolved monsters cannot drop D-spirits, by the way, so if you're not digivolved yourself, then your only offense against one is to run away until your opponent goes back to normal.)

While Bandai's record with anime licenses is spotty at best, they always seem to devote ample time to the graphics?something fairly obvious when you see BattleSpirit in action. Although the backgrounds and characters aren't really up to modern GBA standards (they don't seem colorful enough; another victim of the WonderSwan port, maybe), the animation's excellent, especially considering the cramped quarters we're dealing with here. Although a little less attention was paid to the character balances?why, for example, is Renamon so slow when she's supposed to be among the fastest Digimon in existence??this graphical detail will undoubtedly be enough to satiate series fans alone.

So should anyone else buy this game? It's doubtful?there's that ugly WonderSwan border, the fighting gets samey after a while, and finding the right patterns ensure an easy trek through the game even on Hard mode?but, once again, Digimon fans will be satisfied. You could say that Bandai has accomplished its primary mission?if you're not the target of that mission, though, then you won't lose much sleep if you skip this.